Monthly archive: September, 2013

In reflecting on the ‘dual perspective’ of force and consent, Antonio Gramsci recognised that ‘two things are absolutely necessary for the life of a State: arms and religion . . . force and consent, coercion and persuasion, State and Church, political society and civil society, politics and morals . . . law and freedom, order and discipline . . . violence and fraud’ (Q6§87). My attention was drawn to this commentary by Jonathan Davies (with many thanks) that, in a nutshell, reveals how hegemony for Gramsciis always about the combination of coercion and consent, evoking the half-animal and half-human aspects of Machiavelli’s Centaur. For Gramsci, this came to be famously rendered as ‘State = political society + civil society, in other words hegemony protected by the armour of coercion’ (Q6§88).

With the kick-start to the new academic term in the UK occurring, I thought it appropriate to jolt back into action on For the Desk Drawer with a series of blog posts. There are quite a few in the pipeline but for now I want to concentrate on my attendance at the 8th Rethinking Marxism international conference on ‘Surplus, Solidarity, Sufficiency’ at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst (19-22 September 2013).